The Ministry of National Education informs that, in order to enroll children aged between 3 and 6 years in preschool education, the following stages will take place, successively, at each educational institution:

• re-enrollment of children attending kindergarten in this school year and who wish to attend also in the 2018-2019 school year - will begin on May 7;
• enrollment of newly-arrived children will take place starting May 21.

The schedule for re-enrollments and enrollments will be set by the management of the educational institution and will be posted, in a visible place, in each kindergarten, for the information of parents and the interested public, including on its website (if available), and possibly on the websites of school inspectorates.

Filling of the available places, after the re-enrollment process, will generally be done in descending order by age groups, as follows: large group (children of 5 years), middle group (children of 4 years), and small group (children of 3 years). Based on Government Decision no. 1.252/2012 and within the limits of available spots, children aged between 2 and 3 years can also be enrolled in the small group.

If, in an educational institution, the number of enrollment requests exceeds the number of available spots, general separation criteria and specific separation criteria will be applied successively.

The general separation criteria are as follows:

• having a document proving that a child is an orphan of both parents (the situation of a child coming from an orphanage/a foster center/foster care is assimilated to the situation of a child orphaned of both parents);
• having a document proving that the child is an orphan of one parent;
• having a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational institution;
• having a medical certificate for classification in a disability degree for the child.

The specific separation criteria (developed by each preschool educational institution, approved by its Board of Administration, and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/of the municipality of Bucharest until May 18) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-enrollment lists. Also, the specific separation criteria will only be applied after the general criteria are exhausted.

To ensure the transparency of the re-enrollment/enrollment process, the management of the preschool educational institutions will post, visibly, for all those interested, the following information:

• the capacity of the institution (the number of children it was designed for);
• the number of approved places through the schooling plan for the 2018-2019 school year (by age groups: small, middle, large);
• the general and specific criteria for the enrollment of children;
• the number of children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (during the established period) from the total available.

We mention that private preschool educational institutions are also obliged to visibly display information regarding their status, namely whether they are authorized to operate provisionally or are accredited by the Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-university Education (ARACIP).